Felix has been tackling the problem of my allergic misery. He is in his element, now that I've become, in a sense, a problem that requires a solution. He's rolled up his sleeves and tackled the problem of me methodically and systematically, for which I am grateful, since I myself am incapable of any such strategy. He spent several hours scrubbing down surfaces, vacuuming, dusting, laundering, and so on, in my bedroom and in the living room, the two rooms in which I spend the most amount of time. He got me an air cleaner from Honeywell, which is now my favorite defense contractor. And it's helped, surprisingly so. I have a haven, I'm Julianne Moore in Safe, I'm the boy in the plastic bedroom. I sit in my room and breathe the allergen-free air as it chugs helpfully from the humming, affable little unit. When my cat Sam stands next to it, about the same size, the irony is cutting. Sam, if you're not part of the solution you're part of the problem.

I lay in the dead center of my queen-size bed now, because Felix also helpfully moved some furniture around, and my two small speakers ended up on my headboard bookshelf. Therefore it's necessary for me to lie in state down the center of the bed, in order to get the correct stereo experience. There is a skylight directly overhead. I look up at the sky. Nearby trees rustle, dispensing fresh pollen spores into the dangerous air. The trees' shadows play on the skylight threateningly, but I am safe. Sometimes I imagine I am aquatic life in a habitat, I expect to see a group of children looking at me while squirming in boredom on a stepped carpeted seating area. Other times I think, what is the weirdest thing I can imagine floating by in the frame of this skylight? An old hag on a bicycle. A relaxed procession of starchy foods, buns and bearclaws and crullers and breadsticks.

I imagine a jet engine falling on me like in Donnie Darko. I wonder if Donnie would've seemed so giddy about the prospect if he could've seen that jet engine plummeting toward him. It occurs to me that this, lying here imagining pointless things, is what being old and bedbound must be like. That old person smell! It's the smell of failure. What failure? The failure to be young, of course. Donnie will always be young, and, more importantly, will never have to experience the 1990's.